learning environments: flow /
the learning environment: flow
From a recent article in CNN Money, lauding a new book: The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, by journalist Steven Kotler, pointing out that peak mental states are triggered by a rich environment. Our take-away: Peak educational performance will be triggered by rich, complex, novel educational spaces. If we are going to take education seriously and make the most of what science has to tell us, then the 21st century school will not be business as usual, neutral lecture rooms.
"There are 15 flow triggers that are covered in The Rise of Superman. For example, you want a very specific challenge-to-skills ratio. The challenge needs to be 4% greater than the skills you bring to the table. We took that number and ran with it, and tried to test it in various scenarios, and we have found it's very effective.
A rich environment is another trigger. A rich environment is a fancy way of saying lots of novelty, lots of complexity, and lots of unpredictability. Google (GOOG) is great at this. They talk about 10x improvement and not 10% improvement. When you're asking for 10x improvement, you're throwing out all the existing assumptions, and you have to start radically new. You're massively increasing the amount of novelty, complexity, and unpredictability in your employees' work life."
From: The Science Behind Peak Human Performance, Anne VanderMey, CNN Money, March 17, 2014
approach: visceral and inspiring learning environments /
approach: visceral and inspiring learning environments
School is too often boring. Emotion is too often stifled or viewed as a problem, environments are desaturated to the point of complete neutrality, and too many buildings give the word "institutional" a bad reputation.
When we think of teaching as telling stories, and learning as experiencing the world through those stories, then we have to ask, how do we get students viscerally involved in stories? Furthermore, how do we inspire students to create stories, to make their life an amazing story? Is the hermetic vacuum of a classroom where stories are born?
Given our understanding of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1999), and given our perception that learning is transactional with the learning environment (Dent-Read and Zukow-Goldring, 1997, Wagman and Miller, 2003), we propose an approach to the design of educational environments that acknowledges their active, cognitive impact and power.
Here than are 14 environmental typologies we believe worth considering for the school environment as an alternative to the neutral classroom. We'll explore each typology individually in future posts, but leave you with this image: of a school in which teacher's no longer own their classroom, but instead rotate their class among a wide array of individual learning experiences, a host of unique learning environments appealing to the many different intelligences of their many students.
Here are the 14 typologies:
1. The Bar-Restaurant
2. The Campfire
3. The Digital Environment
4. The Garden
5. The Interview Booth
6. The Kiosk
7. The Library Cafe
8. The Map Room
9. The Sandbox
10. The Speaker's Corner
11. The Tent
12. The TV Array
13. The War Room
14. The Workshop
Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, Basic Books, New York (1999)
Wagman and Miller, Nested Reciprocities: The Organism–Environment System in Perception–Action and Development, (2003)
Dent-Read, C. and P. Zukow-Goldring, “Introduction: Ecological Realism, Dynamic Systems, and Epigenetic Systems Approaches to Development”, in C. Dent-Read and P. Zukow-Goldring (eds.), Evolving Explanations of Development: Ecological Approaches to Organism-Environment Systems, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, (1997)